Red Herring

**Lulu Miller** (0:02)
Hey, it's Lulu, this is Radiolab, and it's summer. In the past, there has been hot girl summer. There's been hot vac summer. This summer arguably is kind of turning into hot diarrhea summer, the one that no one wanted, but we here at Radiolab are offering you something different, which we are calling Cold War Summer, or I'm calling it that because we just realized this will be our third story that involves the Cold War in a month. This one is really special. We're bubbling it up from the archives. It's a tale of espionage. It's a real whodunit that involves submarines, periscopes, hydrophones, a bunker.
I didn't see the answer coming. Enough out of me. Let's jump into this tale. Comes from the archives, was reported by Annie McEwin, and it is called Red Herring.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:50)
Wait, you're listening. Okay.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:52)
All right.

**Annie McEwen** (0:56)
You're listening to Radiolab.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:59)
Radiolab.

**SPEAKER_7** (0:59)
From WNYC.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:02)
CQC.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:04)
Rewind.

**Lulu Miller** (1:12)
Hello, I'm Lulu Miller. This is Radiolab, and today, boom boom. Oh, hello. Hi.
A story from producer Annie McEwen from her bathroom.

**Annie McEwen** (1:24)
I'm actually like straddling the bathtub here, so good thing I did yoga last night.

**Lulu Miller** (1:28)
I do think our thing is like underwater mysteries from the 90s.

**Annie McEwen** (1:32)
Yes. Okay. So today, I have a story. It's like a Tom Clancy international underwater spy thriller with a little spicy science thrown in.

**Lulu Miller** (1:44)
All right. I am grabbing my popcorn. Take me away.

**Annie McEwen** (1:47)
Yeah. Okay. Let's begin with-

**Magnus Ormstad** (1:49)
Yeah. Okay.

**Annie McEwen** (1:50)
Thank you, Magnus.

**Magnus Ormstad** (1:52)
No problem. Yeah.

**Annie McEwen** (1:53)
How do you pronounce your last name?

**Magnus Ormstad** (1:54)
It depends on where you come from. So most Americans would say Wahlberg or Wallberg or something like that. Yeah.

**Annie McEwen** (2:00)
What do you say?

**Magnus Ormstad** (2:00)
Well, that's also depends. In Sweden, it's Valberg.

**Annie McEwen** (2:03)
Oh, wow.

**Magnus Ormstad** (2:04)
But in Denmark, it becomes a bit more like Välberg or something. Wow. Yeah.

**Annie McEwen** (2:09)
Okay. Anyway, Magnus is an associate professor at the University of Southern Denmark, where he studies underwater sound.

**Magnus Ormstad** (2:16)
Yeah.

**Annie McEwen** (2:16)
So let's start off in 1981

**Magnus Ormstad** (2:20)
Yes.

**Annie McEwen** (2:20)
Well, let's go back to that time.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:22)
Yeah. So that's a defining year.

**SPEAKER_10** (2:24)
How old were you then?

**Magnus Ormstad** (2:25)
I was 13 years old. And I was living in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden.

**SPEAKER_10** (2:30)
Okay.

**Magnus Ormstad** (2:30)
And it was an extremely tense period.

**Annie McEwen** (2:35)
Because in Stockholm.

**Magnus Ormstad** (2:36)
You know, we have the Baltic Sea right in front of us.

**Annie McEwen** (2:39)
There was only about 140 miles of water separating Sweden from.

**Magnus Ormstad** (2:45)
The Soviet Union.

**Annie McEwen** (2:50)
And Magnus said to him and a lot of other Swedes, there was just this fear of what was on the other side of the water.

**Magnus Ormstad** (2:55)
I remember this still in the school, you know, you had a map, you could see all the details of the Western Europe.

**Annie McEwen** (3:00)
Small towns, all these roads, the colors of different countries.

**Magnus Ormstad** (3:03)
And then across the Baltic, it was just white.
There was just nothing. And that was Soviet Union. We didn't really know even what was there.

**Annie McEwen** (3:15)
Just this mysterious nothingness.

**Magnus Ormstad** (3:18)
Yeah, and not very far away.

**Annie McEwen** (3:21)
Now, Magnus says it's important to know...

**Magnus Ormstad** (3:23)
Sweden was this kind of island politically, because Sweden was neutral.

**Annie McEwen** (3:28)
But because of a lot of this mystery, a fear of communism, there was always this sense that one of their greatest threats was the Soviet Union.

**Magnus Ormstad** (3:36)
We heard about it all the time. We were even practicing a little bit in school and we were really living in a time when we were worrying about a nuclear war almost daily.

**Annie McEwen** (3:50)
So, 1981, the defining year, it's late October.

**Magnus Ormstad** (3:54)
Sort of when it gets really dark here, you know, and cold and damp.

**Annie McEwen** (3:58)
It's about four in the morning, pitch black.
A fisherman leaves his home, gets in his boat and heads off to check his nets. Sweden has this like super long coastline that's filled with these really complex inlets.

**Magnus Ormstad** (4:13)
Full of islands. There are rocks, like granite islands everywhere.

**Annie McEwen** (4:17)
And just as the sun is starting to come up, this fisherman makes his way into one of these rocky inlets. And all of a sudden, out of the darkness, looming up out of the water right in front of them.